hi i'm getting ready to build st croix 2s60ulf2 2 piece rod. what length rear grip should i use? i looked on the st croix website the handle they use is a 4" rear grip a 2 1/2 " fore grip. with reel seat a little over 10" total length. the reel to be used is shimano sahara 2500 does this sound right? any recommendations would be helpful

thanks much r. flynn

Not sure what you're going to be doing with the rod, but that 2500 reel sounds a bit large. Likely, the largest size reel I'd use on an UL rod would be a 2000, and that's the largest I would use.

I'd not go more than 6" or 7" for a rear grip. Personally, I'd not mess with using a fore-grip, but that's a personal taste issue. Any longer than 6"-7" and you lose that ability to flick casts around with your wrist (which is what most of us do with an UL rod).

It should be what feels right to you. Tape some arbors on the blank in two inch intervals from a short handle on out as far as you want, slip the reelseat over the tape arbors, put on your reel and move it around till it feels right to you than size the grip to that. If you're going to fish from a kayak or canoe I'd sit in one to make sure that everything still is to your liking and nothing is hanging up anywhere while in fishing mode. I like shorter grips for this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2006 06:43PM by Spencer Phipps.

I have a shamano 500 that I use on my UL rods. Love it. And the price is right.
Tape the seat on and see where it feels good. Then measure the distance in back of it.

I'd add on a 4-5" rear grip to the butt section, making your overal length 6'-5". Then if you don't put a guide directly on the ferrule and space the guides on either side of the ferrule with some engineering, you can then keep the outfit rigged for battle and when the sections are mated in transport the stronger protective butt section will be longer than the fraile tip section on both ends. Plus this will produce the the smallest package for transport through dense cover. I made my UL rod out of a Croix 2F764 7'-6" 4wt fly rod and love it for small mouth, it measures out a 7'-9" I like to make custom rods (lengths) you can't just buy production made. AND if you get a chance use a UL reel and look for ones with instant anti-reverse a feature once absent from UL reels even if the larger models in the same series had it.